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Day: November 3, 2009

“…it is asked, ‘Why all this tirade against Roman Catholics?’ We repel the implication. It is not against the unhappy millions that are ground down under the iron heel of that enormous despotism. They are of the common humanity, our brethren and kinsmen, according to the flesh. They need the same light instruction and salvation that we need. Like ourselves they need the one God, the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus; and from the heart we love and pity them. We would grant them all the privileges which we claim to ourselves. We can have no animosity towards them as men and candidates with ourselves for the coming judgment. But it is the system under which they are born, and live, and die, I repeat, which we denounce, and when we shall cease to oppose it, then let our right hand forget her cunning, and our tongue cleave to the roof of our mouth. What is it but a dark and terrible power on earth before which so many horrible memories start up? Why, sir, look at it! We drag the bones of the grim behemoth out to view, for we would not have the world forget his ugliness nor the terror he has inspired. ‘A tirade against Romanism,’ is it? O sir, we remember the persecutions of Justinian; we remember the days of the Spanish Inquisition; we remember the reign of ‘the Bloody Mary;’ we remember the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; we remember St. Bartholomew; we remember the murdered Covenanters, Huguenots, and Piedmontese; we remember the noble martyrs dying for the testimony of the faith along the ancient Rhine; we remember the later wrath which pursued the islanders of Madeira, till some of them sought refuge upon these shores; we remember the Madiai, and we know how the beast ever seeks to propagate his power, by force where he can, by deception where he must. And when we remember these things, we must protest against the further vigor and prosperity of this grand Babylon of all. … We come a growing phalanx [a rectangular mass military formation], not with carnal weapons, but with the armor of the gospel, and wielding the sword of truth on the right hand and on the left, we say that ANTICHRIST MUST FALL. Hear it, ye witnesses, and mark the word; by the majesty of the coming kingdom of Jesus, and by the eternal purpose of Jehovah, THIS ANTICHRIST MUST FALL.”

It’s that time of year again when the shameful marketing of Christ gets into full swing. Do you see anything wrong with this Christmas nativity decoration being sold by Christian Book Distributors, or is it just me?

When I would yell at my children, I was teaching them that they didn’t have to do what I said whenever I said it, just when it was important enough (or I was mad enough) to raise my voice. What’s worse, I was undermining my wife’s authority in the home because she wasn’t as big and scary and didn’t have as deep a voice as me. Thus my word (thundered through the house) became the standard for eliciting obedience. We do not want our children to do what we say with conditions attached. We want them to obey, period. Learning not to repeat ourselves, not to yell, not to call the offending child by all three of his or her names, but to speak in clear, level tones and follow through with consequences for every act of disobedience has completely transformed our home.